


I Heard It Through the Clothes Line

by canolacrush



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Author's Personal Quest to Teach You Stuff About Random Things, Chinese Translation Available in Notes, Clothing Porn, Crack, Established Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, I Don't Even Know, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sexual Tension, Wtf did I just write, You Have Been Warned, You will never find me Mem, hat-chan just wishes Sherlock-senpai would notice it, metaphor overkill, not sure if bodice-ripper or anti-bodice-ripper, possibly both, purple prose for purple shirt buttons, sartorial misunderstandings, sentient clothing, terrible word puns, the POV of clothes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canolacrush/pseuds/canolacrush
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The state of a person's clothing can tell you a lot about someone.</p><p>Part 1:  John Watson's belt keeps coming undone by itself.  Really, it's only trying to help.</p><p>Part 2:  The only cockblockers worse than Sherlock Holmes are his shirt buttons.</p><p>Part 3:  The story of one hat's quest to reunite with the man it was destined for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. John Watson's Belt

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [I Heard It Through the Clothes Line 人靠衣装](https://archiveofourown.org/works/783487) by [kangtacaty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangtacaty/pseuds/kangtacaty)



> Many thanks for the translation, kangtacaty! :D

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You see, at the time (i.e. 3:00 am), it seemed like a perfectly good idea to write about porn from the point of view of a belt. Um...
> 
> So I guess this means I wait with bated breath for this fic to show up on WTF Fanfiction. Ah well. Enjoy the crack, folks. I apologize in advance for the facepalm-worthy puns, because they are truly that terrible.
> 
> ETA: If you've found this via a rec, let me know so I can thank the person properly! (Because getting a bunch of hits outta nowhere is slightly baffling me.) :-)

 

They say that clothes make the man.

 

But like the old problem of the chicken and the egg, there is a perfectly valid theory in play declaring that it is _man_ who makes the clothes.  Who would have guessed?

 

But, when you think of the opposing argument further, it may have a point.  Example: have you ever seen a person who wears the same hat every day, and at some point in time you begin to realize that the hat has become a part of that person, as inextricable from his persona as the shape of the nose on his face?  In some articles of clothing, there is a bit of magic to them, as if a piece of someone’s soul has leaked into the fabric and stayed on long after the original owner has passed.

 

In the case of John Watson’s belt, it was still in the process of acclimatizing to its new owner: previously, the belt had belonged to the late Captain Nathaniel K. Briggs of the good ship _Seagull_ , a sturdy Hemingway-esque figure who’d been a proud bachelor all his life and not ashamed to admit it.  John had found the belt in a used clothing shop and had been somewhat charmed by the small anchor emblem on the buckle, and, figuring that a belt was a belt, had purchased it.

 

The belt, imbued with the salty dog spirit of the late Captain Briggs, was for the most part pleased about the new lad it had acquired.  It recognized right away that John was a military man: he kept his shirt tucked in, he got dressed around 0700 hours, and there was the telltale gun he sometimes kept tucked into the back of his trousers.  It also knew that John was an adventurous man, taken to sudden sprinting and leaping, and the belt admired this trait—it would not have been a happy belt if it had been twined around the waist of a sedentary man.  After a month or so, the belt decided it liked Johnny (as the belt had dubbed him), and it was honoured to keep his trousers ship-shape and his gun secure at the small of his back.

 

While the belt’s main goal in its inorganic life was to do its job successfully, the belt also strived not to be a nuisance in any way—it vowed not to slip upwards through the belt loops and cut into Johnny’s stomach, and it avoided getting needlessly stuck in the belt notches.  So when the belt noticed that there were occasions when the mast below deck was being raised, it naturally decided to make it easier on the lad and quietly click itself undone.  It had been accustomed to the ways of a seaman, and it figured it knew the routine.

 

Sherlock, of course, was the first to notice.

 

“John, your belt’s undone,” he rumbled as they made their way through the seedy strip club their latest case had taken them to.

 

John, who’d stopped to gawk at one of the exceptionally athletic pole dancers spinning through her routine, looked down and noticed the buckle loosened.  He adjusted it with a “Thanks, must’ve forgotten to do it up last.”

 

“Eyes on the mark, John,” Sherlock added, before suddenly taking off in pursuit of their target, who was escaping through the back entrance.

 

John had chased along after him, thoughts of the pole dancer soon forgotten.  The belt had stayed on, keeping the gun secure at his back.

 

The next time it happened several months later, it was incredibly inconvenient.  John and Sherlock had been tailing an exotic animal smuggler through the dockyards when they were ambushed by three enormous men.  John had promptly shoved one charging man into another one, then pulled out his gun and ordered them to get on their knees.  Glancing over at Sherlock, he’d caught sight of his flatmate smoothly disarming the remaining man of his crowbar and headbutting him with such force that the man fell over backwards, knocked out.

 

The belt could not have known what caused the ensuing reaction—it knew the world only through touch, not sight or telepathy.  But if it had, it would have known that the cocktail of adrenalin, the sight of Sherlock’s body gliding through the mechanical movements of self-defense, and the loud _smack_ of skulls connecting with delicious violence were enough to make John Watson’s pupils dilate.  Top it all off with Sherlock twirling the crowbar as if it were a pencil and muttering “Amateurs” in that irresistible baritone, and John felt like all the air had evacuated from his lungs.

 

The belt clinked itself undone, and John felt his trousers slide marginally down his hips.  It wasn’t low enough to show off his pants to the world, but it was enough for him to notice the change and be powerfully self-conscious of his sudden and inconvenient hard-on.  Flushing red at the ears yet still keeping his weapon trained on the thugs, John tried to readjust the belt back in place one-handed.

 

Sherlock, noticing (because when did he ever _not_ notice?), rolled his eyes and mumbled “Oh for god’s sake.”  He stalked over to John and yanked the belt back into the proper notch, causing John to give a rather unmanly yelp of confusion.  The belt, not used to being so gruffly manhandled by the unfamiliar fingers of Sherlock Holmes, squeezed tighter around Johnny’s hips in alarm.

 

“John,” said Sherlock, tucking the leather stub back into a belt loop.  “Take care of these and catch up.”  He then took off at a sprint, chasing after the animal smuggler who was currently escaping via shipping flatboat.

 

John had five seconds to take a couple of deep breaths and compose himself before he moved toward the kneeling thugs, swiftly pistol-whipped them into unconsciousness, then ran after his mad flatmate who was ‘borrowing’ an unattended fishing boat and yelling for John to hurry up.  By the end of the night, when the case had come to a close and both men were luxuriating in the heat of the sitting room fire and mugs of tea, they’d implicitly decided not to talk about it.  The belt rested snugly around John and was none the wiser for what it had instigated.

 

The third time seemed to have happened for no apparent reason, as far as John Watson was concerned.  It had been one of the quieter evenings at Baker Street: John was typing up their latest case for the blog, and Sherlock was in the kitchen/laboratory boiling up a concoction that would purportedly change colour in the presence of cerberin.

 

Stretching at his desk, John glanced into the kitchen to see Sherlock hunched over a cooling flask and decked out in oversized safety goggles, the tartan dressing gown, and heat-resistant gloves.  Sherlock kept his eyes on the liquid, fingers drumming on the table.  When the concoction turned a bright orange, Sherlock crowed in victory and ripped his gloves off, throwing them in the sink and dashing to his laptop to type up his findings.

 

John smiled, amused to note that Sherlock had forgotten to take off the humongous goggles in all the excitement, which pushed the dark curls in awkward clumps all over his head.

 

“Is it alive, Dr. Frankenstein?” John asked.

 

“No, John, dead!” Sherlock pronounced.  “Dead, dead, dead!  This’ll put at least a hundred poisoners in India on death row for sure!”  He beamed at John, who felt an inexplicable flutter of _want_ at the sight of this exuberant man with goggles pressing lines into his cheeks.

 

The belt slid out of the customary notch and loosened itself slowly, deciding that a small twitch was hardly worth rushing for.  When John turned back to his laptop, he frowned and noticed the loosened belt.

 

“Huh.  I could’ve sworn…” he muttered as he readjusted it.

 

“It’s done it again,” said Sherlock in John’s ear.

 

John turned his head to see Sherlock leaning over his shoulder, staring blatantly down at John’s crotch.  “What?” said John, suddenly _extremely_ aware of Sherlock’s breath on his neck.

 

“Your belt.  It’s loosened again on its own.  It must be defective.”

 

John waved Sherlock away, worried that he might notice something growing beyond the belt.  “The belt’s fine, Sherlock.  It probably just slipped my mind to do it up properly.  Go back to saving India.”

 

Sherlock eyed John silently for a moment before returning to his own laptop in a dramatic whirl of tartan, and John inwardly breathed a sigh of relief.  The belt, meanwhile, wondered when Johnny would make up his damn mind about whether he was putting up the sails or not; indecision was not a trait it had picked up from Captain Briggs, and the belt had little patience with uncertainty.  In the end, however, the incident passed without any significant thought or comment from all parties—or at least that is how it seemed.

 

Days passed where nothing happened.  Johnny would go to the grocery store, and sometimes he’d be running around somewhere, gun in tow.  Sometimes Johnny would simply sit in his chair all night—the belt hated those evenings, where it spent its time uselessly pressed into a cushion.  However, the belt went about its usual business in keeping trousers up, and for the most part, it remained as content as it ever was (or as it ever could be, being a belt).

 

The fourth time surprised everyone.

 

It was after a long, wet night spent out in the streets of London.  John and Sherlock had been running themselves ragged for three days straight on the hunt for a serial killer with a habit of lopping off his victims’ toes (which had done nothing to help Sherlock’s relationship with Scotland Yard, as they all kept giving him suspicious looks until John had finally snapped and told them to either bugger off or dismiss them from the case).  When it was all through, and the killer had been captured, and the customary post-case dinner had been eaten, and they’d hauled themselves up the stairs and removed their coats and water-logged shoes, John made tea. 

 

John yawned as he handed over Sherlock’s mug.  Sherlock took it with a small word of thanks and gulped it greedily.  John settled in his own chair and let the heat from the mug warm his fingers for a minute or two before sipping slowly, trying to make the warmth last.  He sent a tired smile to Sherlock, who returned it with a twitch of his lips, seemingly lost in thought.

 

After the tea had been consumed, John dragged himself out of his chair, retrieved Sherlock’s mug, and plodded into the kitchen to put the mugs in the sink.  John had no sooner set them down with a small _clink-clink_ than he found Sherlock Holmes’s hands spinning him around, attaching themselves to the back of his neck, and pulling him forward into a kiss.

 

Just like that, John was awake.  He was kissing back without a second thought, mouth opening to the slick, warm tongue pressing against his lips.  His hands entangled themselves in Sherlock’s curls as they tried to coordinate how their faces best fit together for optimal kissing.  Sherlock’s tongue stroked the roof of John’s mouth.  John moaned, a shiver running down his spine.  He retaliated by moving one hand from Sherlock’s head to the small of his back.  He pulled them together.  Their chests met, and the belt was surprised to find itself up against another belt, this one a thin black one made of polyurethane.  For a moment, John’s belt was too stunned at the feel of another rectangular clasp of metal to react as it should—it had been a long, long time, both during its time with Johnny and Captain Briggs, since it had met another of its kind, and the familiar-yet-new meeting of right angles and cord was a thrill all its own.  It soon recovered its senses, though, when it realized that not only was the ship raising sail in Johnny’s port, but there was another vessel doing the same off the bow.  It struggled for a moment to get itself undone—the other belt pressed against it made manoeuvring difficult—but eventually it succeeded, and the buckle slipped away from the button of John’s trousers.

 

John broke the kiss, panting, and gazed into Sherlock’s dilated eyes.  “Sh—Shouldn’t we talk about this?” he wheezed.

 

Sherlock grunted in annoyance and made a beeline for John’s neck.  “Talking’s boring,” he rasped, his voice thick with need.  He mouthed at the skin below John’s ear and pressed him into the kitchen counter.

 

“Right.  Agreed— _oh Christ_ ,” John gasped, hands clenching into Sherlock’s shirt and hair as their clothed erections rubbed against each other.

 

At that moment, John’s belt realized it had forgotten all about the gun still tucked into Johnny’s trousers, which was currently pressing uncomfortably into his tailbone and possibly in danger of slipping if the lads decided that the kitchen counter was no longer a decent place for a shag.  Trapped between two heated, shifting swells, it had no idea how it could possibly readjust itself.

 

Luckily, John had noticed the same problem, and catching a breath, he hissed, “Sherlock—gun.”

 

“Mm,” Sherlock replied, stuffing a hand down the back of John’s trousers to retrieve the weapon.  He grasped the handle and dragged the warm metal under John’s shirt and up John’s spine.  He pressed the mouth of the gun into one of John’s shoulderblades and sucked at his collarbone.

 

“ _Jesus_ ,” John moaned, arching into Sherlock’s touch.  “You know that thing doesn’t have a safety catch.”

 

“My finger’s not on the trigger—and you like it,” Sherlock replied, rocking into John’s erection pointedly.

 

They groaned, getting lost in the friction as they rubbed against each other and placed badly-aimed open-mouthed kisses near each other’s lips.  John’s speech became a litany of profoundly colourful swears mixed with Sherlock’s name.  Sherlock for once seemed at a loss for words, only occasionally breathing out a muted “ _oh god_ ” until his spare hand buried itself with surprising ease into John’s pants.  At that, Sherlock mumbled an unintelligent “ _mwuh?_ ” as his hand closed around John’s cock and brought him off.

 

John came with a shout and smacked his head back into an overhead cabinet, his hands clenching into Sherlock’s neck and arse.  Sherlock cascaded after him, groaning out a low “ _Jooohhnn_ ” and dropping his forehead to John’s shoulder.

 

As the minutes passed and they caught their breath, wiping sweat off their foreheads and quivering, Sherlock slowly placed the gun on the counter and hooked a finger through John’s belt buckle.  He tugged on it.

 

“What bloody _saint_ lives in your belt, John?”

 

“What d’you mean?” John replied, eyebrows furrowing slightly and beaming like a man over the moon.

 

“It came undone as we were...” Sherlock cleared his throat.

 

“Ah, did it?” John said, looking down.  “Guess you’re right—maybe I should get rid of it.”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Sherlock growled, grasping John by the hips and pulling him forward for another kiss.

 

The belt soon found itself ripped from its loops and tossed carelessly on the floor, but it didn’t mind all that much, because shortly after it found another belt to keep it company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Cerberin is a poison found in the leaves and fruits of plants in the genus _Cerbera_ , one of which is _Cerbera odollam_ , also known as the Suicide Tree. The poison essentially stops the heart beating and is typically fatal--ingesting a single seed can cause death. The odollam is native to India, and the toxin is very difficult to detect in autopsies, which makes it an extremely effective murder or suicide weapon. According to a study from 2004 from the Laboratory of Analytical Toxicology in La Voulte-sur-Rhône, France, there are more than 500 documented cases of fatal Cerbera poisoning between 1989 and 1999 in the state of Kerala [in India] alone. The study states, "To the best of our knowledge, no plant in the world is responsible for as many deaths by suicide as the odollam tree." Furthermore, in the history of Madagascar, the poison was ritually used as a means to test one's innocence of a crime, and Cerbera poisionings were responsible for the death of 2% of the population (3000 people per year; 50,000 per generation). The use of ritual poisoning in Madagascar has been outlawed since 1861.
> 
> (Sorry, I have a bit of a fascination with interesting poisons, and the odollam is my second favourite poisonous plant of all time. I figured Sherlock would find the toxin interesting too.)
> 
> So I guess if you enjoyed this madness, stay tuned next time for THE PRUDE THAT LIVES IN SHERLOCK'S SHIRT BUTTONS!


	2. Sherlock's Purple Shirt Buttons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A woman's conversation is as captivating as her body" - attributed to Giacomo Casanova

Contrary to what you might expect, Sherlock Holmes is a thrifty clothes-spender.  He despises the tedium of idling through a shop, putting up with pushy sales representatives, and wasting his valuable time trying on clothes when he could be doing something more productive, such as taste-testing poison.  He buys quality clothing so it won’t deteriorate as quickly.  He wears his shoes until the soles are threadbare.  He sends his clothes to a special laundering/tailoring service so that a.) he doesn’t have to spend time washing the things himself, and b.) if there are any tears, holes, or other wardrobe defects, they can be fixed by an expert.  In a year, Sherlock might buy one new outfit for himself—anything else he receives tends to be gifts or items he’s lifted for disguise purposes.

 

The purple Dolce & Gabbana shirt (the one John Watson loved best, though he never admitted as such) was at least five years old.  It had survived twelve tearings, nine bloodstains, four chemical stains, one bullet, eleven coffee spills, two sauce stains, and three incidents of lost or ripped-off buttons.  The miraculous talent of Sophia Quinton, resident little old lady at the laundering service, saved the shirt on all of these occasions, and she spent her time patiently fixing Sherlock’s clothes as a favour to him for reuniting her with her long-lost daughter Renae.

 

While the shirt itself was five years old, the newest set of buttons had only been added about a year ago.  After the third set of buttons had been lost following a narrow escape from a fencer-cum-art thief in the Louvre, Sophia Quinton had decided that she needed to take extra measures.

 

She had a wide selection of buttons at her disposal, but for the fourth set, she’d chosen to use her great-aunt Lucia’s purple corset buttons as replacements.  The purple corset had been her great-aunt’s one indulgence in life, though it was not even a big indulgence at that: it was a working-class style corset, with a button-up front busk as well as lacing at the back, and Lucia had purchased it shortly after the mauve craze that hit England in the 1860s.  Sophia Quinton had a rather utilitarian outlook on clothing, no matter how old it was, and she decided that if those ancient buttons could hold together the girth of her stiff-lipped ancestor, then they might stand a chance of keeping Mr. Holmes’s shirt together.

 

Those buttons were the bane of John Watson’s newfound existence of suddenly-shagging-your-flatmate-cum-best friend-cum-possible-life-partner.  It wouldn’t have been so bad if they were on _any other_ shirt, but they had to be on the one that was the most enticing, the most god-I-want-to-rip-your-clothes-off-and-bend-you-over-this-table type of shirt.

 

The buttons, however, were highly opposed to being ripped off.  As far as they were concerned, it was their job to keep things together while under an extraordinary amount of strain, and they still thought of themselves as being parts of underthings; thus, they were not items prone to being removed and replaced on and off like some mere jacket.  Lucia had also been the epitome of proper Victorian mores in her day: industrious, no-nonsense, and with a low tolerance for the distraction of sex.  In fact, her tolerance had been so low it was nonexistent—she’d been a maiden aunt.  Therefore, it was understandable on the part of the buttons to behave as they did; it was in their very nature to be obstinate.  And for the past year, they’d served their new master extraordinarily well in that regard—they recognised in him that similar perspective of life, and they clung to the warmth of his chest as if it were a lifeline to a past they missed dearly.

 

But for the past few months or so, the buttons had been under a greater amount of stress than usual.

 

It had started when the buttons noticed that Sherlock’s heartbeat became erratic for no discernible reason.  These arrhythmias would happen when Sherlock was very obviously not running around chasing something, because the gentle lift of his chest as he breathed would not vary much, and his body heat would only be incrementally warmer as opposed to the furnace it usually became after a good sprint.  The buttons couldn’t know what caused the heartbeat to speed and skip so violently, but if they’d had proper eyes to see by or proper ears to hear by, they would’ve seen the awed face of John Watson breathing out compliments: “amazing,” “brilliant,” “fantastic.”  All that the buttons knew was that their steadfast master was out of sorts, and they fussed over him, lightly pressing against his sternum as if they could help calm the frantic muscle beating away beneath his skin.

 

So when they suddenly encountered unfamiliar hands trying to force them apart, they sunk in their proverbial claws and didn’t let go, abstractly terrified on behalf of their master.

 

“Bloody fuck,” John panted, his hands fisting into the purple shirt after he’d shoved Sherlock against the refrigerator.  He fumbled at the buttons, but they slipped out of his grip.  Growling in frustration, he pulled at the shirt once, twice, three times, trying to make the fasteners give way.  The buttons refused.  The shirt stayed on.  John mouthed at the edge of Sherlock’s collarbone peeking out from the top of the shirt, and the top button was startled at the feel of a stubbled chin, which it had never encountered before.  “What the hell is wrong with your shirt?” John breathed, kissing his way up Sherlock’s neck.

 

“Forget about the shirt, John,” Sherlock rumbled, smiling crookedly as he slipped a hand under John’s trousers and squeezed a handful of arse.  “We have access to everything we need.”

 

“ _Jesus_.”

 

They stumbled into Sherlock’s bedroom moments later.  By the end of it all, the buttons were damp with sweat and come, wondering what in the good name of heaven had happened to send their master into such a state, with his heart hammering against his ribs and his chest heaving.

 

John looked down at the debauched mess he’d made of Sherlock: his cheekbones were tinged an unusual shade of red, his curly hair tousled, and the normally pristine lines of the purple shirt were wrinkled and pushed up to the bottom of his breastbone, the skin beneath lying bare.  He chuckled a bit and pinched at the fabric, lifting it away from Sherlock’s sweat-sticky skin.

 

“Sorry about that,” he said.

 

“You can pay for the dry cleaning,” Sherlock replied, wearing one of his infamous smirks.

 

In the meanwhile, the buttons had a vague sense that they’d failed in their mission somehow, though they knew they had not come undone in that bizarre encounter.  When Sherlock bundled up the shirt and had it sent to Sophia Quinton the very next day (because Sherlock, observant as ever, had noticed that John liked him best in the purple shirt and wished to take advantage of that weakness as soon and as often as possible), the buttons made a firm resolution from that cleaning forward to never waver in their sacred duty of defending their young master from the brutish hands that had assaulted them the day before.

 

They might have succeeded, too, if not for two important factors.

 

The first factor being that, under the right circumstances, John Watson can be an exceedingly patient man—he _did_ live with Sherlock, after all.  The second factor, and arguably the most important factor, was that the buttons never could have envisioned his angle of attack.

 

History demonstrates that the most effective assaults begin with a false expectation of normality, and in this circumstance, there was no variation: post-case, the boys had returned to Baker Street.  They’d made tea, bantered a bit, and then Sherlock had said something particularly clever with an undertone of ‘ _come hither, John_ ,’ and John, not one for disobeying orders, had very well come hithered.

 

John settled himself in Sherlock’s lap on the couch, smiled, and ran a hand up Sherlock’s chest.  At the first touch of John’s hand, the buttons bristled and clung to the shirt fabric.  John ignored the obstacle the buttons were presenting in favour of trailing a hand up to Sherlock’s neck and running a thumb along his jawline.  They started kissing—gently, leisurely, as if they were practicing brushstrokes on a canvas.

 

But since Sherlock was incapable of maintaining a single mood for more than three minutes at a time, their kiss escalated into a frenetic clash of tongues, broken by gasps for air and low moans.  The buttons sensed their master’s heartbeat soaring and braced themselves.  When John tried to slip a nail underneath the rim of the first button, it clamped down and pinched the tip of his finger.

 

“Ouch,” John mumbled, flicking his hand away and putting the finger in his mouth.  Sherlock quirked an eyebrow that was both suggestive and inquisitive.  “Your shirt bit me,” John explained.

 

“This shirt doesn’t have teeth,” Sherlock replied, already making his way with ease down the row of buttons on John’s shirt and sliding a palm across the scar on John’s shoulder.

 

John paused, eyebrows furrowing briefly.  “You have a—no, never mind.  Don’t want to know,” he said, opting instead to make another go at the purple buttons.  The buttons squeezed back on the pads of his fingers.  “How the hell do you get this _off?_ ”

 

Sherlock rolled his eyes.  “With patience and small talk, John, how _else_?  There isn’t a science to unbuttoning a shirt.”

 

John huffed as another button slipped through his fingers.  “Tell that to your shirt.”

 

A minute passed, and Sherlock drummed his fingers on John’s thigh, impatient.  He sighed.  “For god’s sake, let _me_ do it then,” he said, reaching towards the top button.

 

“No, I can do this,” John muttered, swatting Sherlock’s hands away, sticking his tongue out in concentration.  “I know how to unbutton a bloody shirt.”

 

Sherlock waited a whole twenty seconds before stuffing his right hand down John’s trousers.  John jumped.

 

“ _Jesus_ , what’s the rush?”

 

“Bored,” Sherlock said, fondling John’s half-hard erection.  “You’re taking too long.”

 

John made a small, high-pitched noise at the touch, his back straightening at the jolt that ran up his spine.  His fingers abandoned their futile onslaught on the buttons.  John gripped Sherlock’s wrists, tugged them out of his trousers, and pinned those slender hands against the couch’s backrest.  He pressed his lips against Sherlock’s and held him there, simply breathing against him until Sherlock quit trying to free himself.

 

Breaking away from the kiss, John looked Sherlock in the eyes and said, “I’d like to take it slow for once, if that’s all right by you.”

 

“John, if I let _you_ set the pace, we won’t have sex until morning,” Sherlock retorted.

 

“And what’s wrong with that?” John said, raising an eyebrow.

 

Sherlock heaved a long-suffering sigh and tilted his head back until it rested on top of the backrest.  “Hand me my phone while you’re at it,” he rumbled.

 

“No.”  John leaned forward and nipped at the skin under Sherlock’s ear, making him shiver.  “Behave, or I’ll make it take longer.”  He released Sherlock’s hands.

 

Sherlock immediately reached for John’s crotch.  John grabbed Sherlock’s wrists again.  “Sherlock, were you _not_ listening to what I just said?”

 

“Mm, no.”

 

“Now you’re just taking the piss.  _Hold still_ ,” he growled.

 

Sherlock smirked and arched an eyebrow.  “Make me.”

 

A coil of irritation and arousal sprung up in the pit of John’s stomach.  He lunged forward, halting within an inch of Sherlock’s lips.  Sherlock’s mouth hung open, waiting for the impact.  “Nice try,” John breathed.

 

Sherlock groaned loudly in frustration.

 

“All right, down you get,” John said, nudging Sherlock with his shoulder to lie down on the couch while keeping a careful grip on his wrists.

 

Sherlock sighed.  They shuffled around until they were stretched out along the couch, John still straddling Sherlock’s hips.  John stared down at the buttons of Sherlock’s shirt and puzzled over how to open them.  That purple shirt had taunted him long enough that he craved to see it loose and open—to see that deep, rich, purple fabric directly juxtaposed against the ghostly white of Sherlock’s chest.  It was as though, while wearing that shirt (or any shirt, really, but _especially_ the purple shirt), that Sherlock still maintained one lingering source of his composure, securing a subconscious reluctance to ever _fully_ integrate into whatever sort of relationship he and John had found themselves in.

 

John shifted his gaze upwards to see that Sherlock’s eyes had glazed over while staring at the ceiling.  “Sherlock,” John said, trying to keep his voice even.

 

No response.

 

A bit firmer, John repeated, “Sherlock.”

 

“Hm?” Sherlock responded, eyes still fixed on the ceiling.

 

“You’re bored.”

 

“Well observed, John.”  Sherlock’s gaze flickered down.  “You’re not being particularly stimulating at the moment.”

 

John sighed, closed his eyes, and mentally counted to ten before opening them again.  Sherlock had resumed his staring contest with the plaster.  “Sherlock, what are we?” John asked.

 

Sherlock furrowed his brow.  “People, John, obvious.”

 

“Don’t—just don’t.  You know what I’m asking.  We haven’t...well, we haven’t discussed it yet.  What are we, then?  Is this just a...a passing thing, a permanent thing, what?”

 

Sherlock sighed and rolled his eyes.  “Must we discuss this _now_?”

 

“May as well.  I have you at my tender mercies.”  John smiled lightly and squeezed Sherlock’s wrists.

 

Sherlock snorted.  “If I wanted to throw you off, I could.”

 

“But you haven’t yet,” John reminded him.  Sherlock made an assenting noise, and John waited for him to say something else.  When he didn’t, John prompted, “So?  Still waiting on that answer.”

 

Sherlock turned his listless gaze from the ceiling to the fireplace.  “What does it matter, John?” he said.

 

A twinge reverberated in John’s chest, and he instantly let go of Sherlock’s wrists.  He paused.  “Right,” he said, before shifting to move off, already thinking about just how long a walk he’d have to take to swallow _that_.

 

Sherlock snagged him by the waist.  “Where are you going?” he hissed.

 

“What does it matter?” John retorted.

 

“Oh for god’s sake, that’s not what I meant!” Sherlock said, pulling John forcefully towards him.

 

“You’ve got three seconds to explain what you meant, then,” John replied evenly, leaning back over Sherlock.

 

“ _Words_ , John.  The _words_ , the classifications, the labels, they’re insignificant.  _You_ matter, and you matter to me.  Is that not enough?” Sherlock said, meeting John’s gaze with something between annoyance and earnestness.

 

John swallowed.  “It’s...better,” he said, cautiously easing back into place.  “Still could do with a bit more than that, though.”

 

Sherlock sighed and readjusted himself back down on the couch.  “In what sense?” he asked.

 

“What’s the...commitment level we’re talking about here?” John countered, nervously licking his lips halfway through the question.

 

Sherlock frowned.  “Presumably until such time that we find ourselves either physically or emotionally incapable of maintaining such an arrangement.”

 

“That’s...vague,” John replied.

 

Sherlock groaned and pressed his forearm over his eyes.  “God, _must_ we do this?  I can feel my brain cells decaying, John!”

 

John crossed his arms.  “Sorry that I find defining our relationship to be more important than sex at the moment, Sherlock.”

 

“ _Definitions_ ,” Sherlock spat, in exactly the same tone he said ‘ _Anderson_.’  He removed the arm from his eyes and glared at John.  “Definitions are useless.  Why do you think I had to create my own job title?  _There wasn’t a defined term for it._   Girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, mistresses, partners, significant others, friends with benefits—what does it matter?  We could call ourselves cockleshells for all I care; the terms are as fluid and unreliable as any other.  What’s important is us in the here and now, and whether we function together or not.  That is all we need to know.”

 

John rested a hand on Sherlock’s chest and contemplated his words, studying the keen shine in Sherlock’s eyes.  “I suppose you have a point,” he said after a moment.

 

“Of course I do, now can we just _get on with it_?” Sherlock whinged, thrusting up into John’s hips as a reminder.

 

Just as Sherlock was about to pull John’s shirt off the rest of the way, John captured his hands one more time.

 

Sherlock stared at him.  “ _Really_ , John?  Considering how successful that move turned out to be last time, I’m surprised you’re repeating it.”

 

“Who says it wasn’t successful?” John countered, and, as he was gazing down at the impenetrable buttoned line of defence, he was struck with a brilliant idea.  He lowered his head to the topmost button, the one he had struggled with many times, and pressed his lips against it.

 

The button froze, unsure what it was feeling—something soft, warm, and a bit humid; something gently running along the rim of its vegetable ivory sides.  It had never encountered such a genial tactile sensation, and it revelled in the strange and indulgent caress.  Suddenly, the button was overwhelmed by a wet, thick, hot muscle running across its surface, and it promptly achieved the button equivalent of swooning, slipping through the crack in the fabric.  The first button had come undone.

 

John grinned in triumph and lowered his head to the next button, sucking the knob between his lips and swirling his tongue over the circular surface.

 

“What in god’s name are you doing to my shirt, John?” Sherlock said, an amused smile quirking his lips at the small sucking sound John was making.

 

John cradled his bottom lip on the button and mumbled, “Loosening it up a bit.”  He laved it with his tongue and pushed on it with his upper lip, guiding the button back through the fabric slit.

 

Sherlock chuckled.  “You look as though you’re fellating it.”

 

“Mm, right idea, wrong body part,” John said with a smirk.  He kissed at the freed portion of skin.

 

Sherlock frowned briefly before raising his eyebrows in understanding.  “Not my area.”

 

“Nope.”

 

One by one, the buttons succumbed to the gentle caress of John’s lips, tongue, and breath—an intimate warmth they couldn’t help but trust and crave—and by the time the last button near Sherlock’s navel had been sucked and kissed into collapse, the purple buttons were hopelessly in love.

 

John released Sherlock’s wrists and carefully peeled back the folds of the purple shirt so that it framed the white of Sherlock’s chest, lightly dusted with dark hair.  He ran his hands up Sherlock’s sides and felt the bump of every scar and rib, his thumbs settling just at the edge of his nipples.

 

“God, yes,” John whispered.

 

Sherlock settled a warm hand on John’s wrist and smiled, eyes glowing.  “Quite so, John,” he murmured.

 

It was a nonsensical reply, but that didn’t seem to matter—the resulting kiss made all the sense in the world as far as either of them were concerned.  Moments later, when they pressed themselves together, the purple buttons brushed the open edges of John’s shirt, and the round knobs felt as though they could clasp that other fabric as tight as a bivalve might join together its two sides.  Between the two of them, warmth, life, and a sort of tenderness flourished, and if the next time the buttons were easier to open, then it could be said that Dr. John Watson had at last perfected the art of wooing inanimate objects through patience, understanding, and a dash of conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really, when you think about it, Sherlock's shirt buttons originally coming from a corset is really the _only_ explanation for how those things stay on, I tell you.
> 
> Fun facts: Although not as common as corsets that just had lacing at the back, there were in fact "working-class" style corsets that had buttons or some other fastener up the front as well. Typically, corsets worn by wealthier ladies were laced up by servants, hence the lack of a need for front fastenings; however, for women who didn't have servants, they also sold corsets that could be taken on and off pretty easily via front buttons/hook-and-eye fasteners, etc. As for the "mauve craze" in the 1860s, this was caused by the accidental discovery of a synthetic purple-ish dye by Sir William Henry Perkin (he was actually trying synthesize quinine, but when he found out he'd made a cheap and easy recipe for purple dye instead, he mass-produced that sucker like the bamfest of entrepreneurs). The colour was made popular after Queen Victoria wore a "mauve"-dyed gown at the 1862 Royal Exhibition, and EVERYBODY wanted something in that colour after that. Before the "mauve" discovery, purple dye was actually quite expensive and was made from the secretions of a certain sort of sea snail found in the Mediterranean--they had to kill quite a lot of them in order to make one jar's worth of the dye, hence its expense and its resulting association with royalty (since they could afford it). [Also resulting in the origin of my weird mollusc/buttons/love metaphor in this fic.] Lastly, the material the buttons are made of--vegetable ivory--is a product made from the hard, white endosperm of certain palm tree seeds, which was discovered around the Victorian era (circa 1862 as well) and was used for making buttons (since it was a cheap alternative to actual ivory, which is what the product resembled). THE MORE YOU KNOW!
> 
> As a last note for the upcoming chapter, I feel I should warn you that I, like Sherlock, am incapable of maintaining a single tone for longer than two chapters--the next one is the oddest chapter out of the three: it simultaneously manages to be the crackiest chapter and potentially the darkest (?) chapter. So if you feel like considering that the fic stops here, that's fine (in a way, Chapter 3 will be more like a bizarre epilogue than anything else). In any case, thanks for reading! :-)


	3. The Deerstalker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original plan for this chapter was going to be a whole lot darker, but then I decided that it would be cruel to inflict you with yet more Reichenfeels. You're welcome.

It was a perfect fit, no matter what he might say.  The hat knew this deep down in its woollen strands.  It knew, as soon as it touched the soft curls of his head, that this man was the one it had waited for.

 

The hat had worn many heads in its long, arduous life.  It had alighted on the hoary hairs of old Scotsmen hunting in the Highlands.  It had been passed from father to son.  It had been donated to theatre and dragged into spotlights and pomaded coifs.  It knew dandruff.  It knew hair dye.  It knew the scents of shampoo and cigars.  It knew the smell of blood fresh spilt from a hart’s throat.  It knew mist, which permeated each thread until it felt as full as a cloud.  It breathed soot and smoke, but it had never tasted fire.

 

It had never tasted genius.

 

Until the man, who so carelessly picked it up and wore it outside the theatre.

 

The hat had felt the heat of many thoughts before, the electrochemical pulses sputtering like untrustworthy radiators beneath a layer of hair and bone.  They warmed the hat even as the hat warmed the head, but their intensity paled in comparison to the inferno that blazed within the crucible of the man’s skull.  In those first few seconds of wondrous heat that seeped into every fibre of its being, the hat knew the head of its destiny.

 

But just as suddenly, the hat was ripped from those noble curls and deposited on the floor of a cab.

 

It ached, the hollow in the bowl of its centre feeling palpably empty.  It lay amongst the dirt and grit of the carpeted floor, cold and yearning.  It waited.  It assumed there’d been a mistake—that the man would come back for it, because surely he had felt the connection too.  As far as the hat knew, there was no other sense of rightness in the world than the unquestionable fact that it belonged on the head of the genius.  It assumed that the genius, by definition, should know this and return.

 

Sometime later, the hat knew not when, it was discovered by the cabbie, who, amused, gave it to his young son.  The hat was appalled; it fancied itself to be like one of those captured maidens it had heard about from its previous theatre neighbour, the stage crown.  It waited in vain for its knight gallant as it was subjected to the boy’s raucous galloping while he pretended to be the famous detective he saw on television.  

 

The boy frequently wore the hat to the park.  One day, in the midst of a vigorous adventure with his best mate that involved lots of climbing and running and jumping across a play-structure, he dropped the hat and forgot it.  The hat briefly rejoiced in its escape before it was later found by a man of the street, who pulled down the flaps to keep his ears warm on the cold nights.

 

The man was given twenty quid to gather information.

 

“Oi, yer the one with the hat, aintcha?” said the man.  He pointed to a picture in the newspaper he was holding, then at his own hat.

 

Sherlock heaved a long-suffering sigh and glared over his shoulder at John.  “Yes,” Sherlock answered curtly.  “Just keep your eyes and ears open.  Inform me of anything out of the ordinary.”  He turned and stalked off in a whirl of coat.

 

“Can do, Mr. Holmes,” the man called after him.

 

After several days filled with rain and grime and dull, basic thought, the hat came to the realisation that its genius may never come back; if the man had wanted to find it, the hat was sure he would have by now.  The hat was unwanted.  Unworthy.  It fell into despair, resigned to live with the head it now called home.

 

On the fifth day since the homeless man had spoken with Sherlock Holmes, he finally heard an inkling of something interesting.  He was sitting in a cafe, carefully sipping a coffee he’d managed to afford, trying to make it last.  The hat rested on the table, drying off.

 

The man heard whispers at the next table over.

 

“Damn it, Ernie, how could you lose the dog?”

 

“I thought you said the shop at _Ninth_ Street, not Knight Street!”

 

A frustrated groan.  “Well, you idiot, there goes our fortune.  Our retirement to Aruba, all because you gave it to the _animal dealers_ and not the vet.”

 

“They seemed to think it’d fetch a good price, though, Pete.  Pedigree and everything.”

 

“Who the fuck cares about its _pedigree_?  Compared to what’s inside it, the pedigree ain’t worth shit.”

 

“We could ask for it back?” Ernie offered.

 

“Oh, they’ve probably sold it by now.  But it’s worth a shot, I guess,” Pete replied with a sigh.  Chairs scraped across the floor as the men got up, and the man watched them as they walked out of the cafe.  The man asked the barista for a pen, scribbled on the back of his receipt, and left the restaurant in a hurry.

 

The hat stayed behind.

 

It was growing used to disappointment.  It had occupied a dozen heads of mediocrity, and it somehow sensed that it would never again occupy another shining mind like the one from before, but even the hat had to concede that one warm head was better than none.  Disappointment was something it could endure, but loneliness was another thing entirely.  It sat in coffee stains and used napkins, wishing someone, anyone, would wear it.

 

The barista, while wiping down the tables, found the hat and put it on a shelf in case someone came back for it.  She mused that it looked familiar somehow, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

 

The following morning, the barista was filling an order for one black coffee with two sugars and a cambric tea.  She squinted through her glasses at the two men behind the counter, still not quite awake, and said, “You two look familiar somehow...have you been here before?”

 

Sherlock groaned and lifted his eyes to the ceiling.  John smiled politely at the barista and sent Sherlock a Look that managed to convey ‘Sherlock be nice or she’ll spit in our drinks’ with a mere furrow of his eyebrows.

 

Sherlock forced a smile at the barista.  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

 

“No, I got it!  You’re the detectives, from the newspapers!” the barista declared triumphantly.

 

Sherlock sighed even as John shuffled forwards and said, “Sorry, how much was it again?”

 

The revelation seemed to have perked up the barista’s speed, since the two drinks appeared instantly on the counter.  “Didn’t quite recognise you without the hat,” she said with a grin.  “Speaking of...”  She reached behind her and pulled the hat from the shelf.  “Someone left this in here the other day.  Maybe one of your fans?  I’d bet they’d be surprised if they came back for it and found it’d been autographed.”  She winked.

 

Sherlock glanced at the hat, recognised the haggard threads on it as belonging to the hat of the homeless man from the other day, then abruptly snatched it from her and pocketed it.  “I can do better than that, Miss Lindsay, I can return the hat to its owner.”  He smiled tightly, grabbed the drinks, and abandoned John to pay the bill.

 

The hat couldn’t know what had happened; one set of fingers was the same as any other.  It submitted to an uncomfortable ride squished in a coat pocket because there was nothing else it _could_ do.  It had never felt so ragged and threadbare before.

 

 

Later, in the sitting room at Baker Street, John was typing up the Case of the Bejewelled Pooch when Sherlock dropped the hat on top of his keyboard.

 

“Figure out what to do with this, John,” Sherlock instructed, swanning away into the kitchen to start a new experiment apparently involving leather and piranhas (how Sherlock managed to obtain piranhas in the time John had gone to get some take-away for them is something John didn’t dare question, but he blamed the animal dealers they’d encountered for giving his flatmate the idea).

 

John picked up the hat, eyebrows furrowed in confusion.  “I thought you were giving this back to, ah, Alvin.”

 

Sherlock dropped a leather glove into the piranha tank and watched as the fish picked at it.  “I’ve sent one of the new ones supplied by our _fans_ instead,” Sherlock replied, spitting out the hated f-word as if it were tainted meat.  “Considering that the new ones have no use for us here.”

 

John blinked and stared at Sherlock.  His lips stretched into a fond, soft smile as he watched the madman scribble something furiously into a notebook.  “That was very kind of you, Sherlock.”

 

Sherlock snorted, his gaze rapt upon the piranha.  “It isn’t _kindness_ , John, it’s utilitarian.  Those ridiculous hats are utterly useless to me, so sending a new one to Alvin serves a much better purpose for it.  He was useful in helping us find both the dog and the jewel it had swallowed, and rewarding that usefulness builds loyalty from the homeless network with no effort or expense on my part.”

 

John smirked.  “Yes, and now you’re stuck with a hat you have even _less_ use for than you do the new ones.  _Kindness_.”

 

“Correction: _you’re_ stuck with a hat you have no use for, John,” Sherlock said, that odd half-smile dancing on his lips.

 

John chuckled under his breath, stood up, and went into the kitchen.  He jammed the hat on Sherlock’s head.  The sensation of fire flowed through the hat’s tweed, and for a second, the hat believed it had actually met its demise in some junkyard furnace.  But then, it felt only a burst of joy as it relished in the pulses of life and thought coursing beneath it at transcendental speeds.  It knew.  It knew their path was a shared destiny all along.

 

Sherlock grunted at the imposition, making as if to yank the hat off, when John caught his hands and enclosed them in his own.  “You know, you still manage to surprise me sometimes,” John said warmly.

 

Sherlock turned away from the fish to face John, allowing his hands to remain captured.  His gaze flitted over John’s face, and the half-smile returned.  “And you still manage to not be boring.”

 

John’s expression paused on mildly offended, then shifted to hesitantly pleased.

 

Sherlock arched a brow.  “Do you know what I see when I wake up?” he asked.

 

“On the days you sleep in a proper bed?  Usually my ugly mug drooling into a pillow, I’m guessing.”

 

“More than that, John, I see everything.”  He waited to see if John understood.  When it was clear he did not, Sherlock bore his gaze into John’s eyes and said, “I see the first day we met when I see the curve of your leg under the sheets.  When I look at your hands, I see you standing so _deceptively_ unassuming beyond the police lines the day you shot the cabbie.  I see your entire military history in your scar and the lines of your face.  Then, I observe the newer changes—I see the handful of gray hairs I gave you that time I was shot.  Do you remember that day?”

 

John nodded grimly.  Sherlock grinned.  “You were extraordinary,” he rumbled, his already low voice pitching lower.  “I’ve never seen someone quite so effectively utilise a folding chair as a weapon before.”

 

The hat felt a curious...concentration of heat develop beneath its brim, as if the wildfire of thought were transforming into a star, burning all the more hotter but all the more focussed—the energy of pure meditation.  The hat was in awe.

 

Sherlock edged closer, freeing one of his hands to run a finger across John’s cheek.  “When I see your lips, I recall the first time we kissed; when I see the bite mark on your neck, I remember _putting it there_ the night before; when I see your arse, I remember all the times I’ve sunk my cock into it and all the times I _should have been_ doing just that.”

 

“Jesus, no wonder you’re a morning person,” John said hoarsely, pupils dilated, mouth open.

 

Sherlock coiled his other arm around John’s waist and drew him flush against his chest, sparks in his eyes.  “Do you understand, John?  You’re an accumulation, an experience, of so many things I can’t help but admire, and how you bundle up all those things into such an ordinary frame and mind is...”  Sherlock furrowed his brow, trying to find the phrasing.  “...is an ongoing investigation,” he tried.

 

John curled his hands around Sherlock’s nape and pulled him downwards.  “Same to you,” he murmured, then kissed him, hard.  Tongues clashed.

 

The hat wondered where this man had been hiding all its life.  With the kiss, a surge of serotonin and dopamine augmented the flame like petrol, and the hat fumbled for every fire-related metaphor it had picked up over its many years to figure out what could be happening—baptism by fire, moth to flame, like a house on fire, rekindling an old flame, setting the Thames on fire—it couldn’t settle on one.  All it knew was one thing: while the hat could never possess genius itself, it decided that it could not exist without that deliciously scalding heat next to its woollen skin—it would rather unravel its strands one by one.

 

John broke off the kiss and sucked in a breath.  “Can we not do this in front of the fish?  It’s a bit...”

 

“Not good?”  Sherlock was already crowding John into the sitting room.

 

“Creepy.  They don’t exactly blink.”

 

Sherlock shook with silent laughter; John giggled.  They came together for another sloppy kiss, sucking at lips and tongue.  After manoeuvring John into his accustomed chair, Sherlock promptly dropped to his knees and nuzzled into the denim of John’s crotch, breathing in the musk there.  John burst out laughing.

 

“And what is so amusing now?” Sherlock rumbled, biting into the loosened metal buckle of John’s belt and tugging it open.

 

“ _You can leave your hat on_ ,” John sang at him, one hand smoothing over the woollen cap.

 

“Mmph,” said Sherlock.  He buried his nails into the side of the hat, ripped it off, and pitched it into the fireplace.  The tweed smouldered, agonizingly slow to catch fire.

 

“Well that’s a bit of a waste,” John said.  He bit his lower lip as Sherlock freed his cock from his pants and gave it a long, loving lick.

 

“It’s so _satisfying_ , though,” Sherlock replied, sending John a wicked grin.  He wrapped his lips around the glans and sank down.  John answered with a small moan, burying his fingers in Sherlock’s curls.

 

The hat rested in the coals, absorbing smoke as it cooked, feeling wretched, betrayed, and rejected...until it felt the tentative lick of a flame on the underside of its brim, followed by a more confident stroke, then another, then another, fanning out across its soft underbelly.  The flames that caressed it were so different from what the hat had believed that fire felt like—it had known there would be heat, but it had never known _burning._   Burning was a tingling dance, a hot tongue on every strand.  Burning was the most intense sensation the hat had ever experienced—fire was painstakingly thorough and devoted, leaving no thread unattended.  The hat revelled in the fire’s fervour, indulged in the crackling whispers, and let itself be consumed as it joined with its partner to transform into bursts of red-white light that cast away the shadows of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO MANY NOTES TO GIVE YOU. I AM SO SORRY.
> 
> 1.) Thanks for reading!  
> 2.) I'm searching for a Sherlock beta who might be willing to one day beta significantly longer and more plot-driven works. If you're interested, drop me a line at canolacrush(at)gmail(dot)com.  
> 3.) I didn't realize when I set out writing this that it was going to end up as a body-heart-mind weird metaphor thing. Nifty when that happens.
> 
> Fun Fact 1: Wool is a strange and magical material that actually has a hard time burning. It's very good at insulating, but in order to catch and stay on fire, it basically has to be constantly exposed to the flame or it goes out on its own. In fact, it's so good at not catching on fire that lots of firefighter clothing is made from it (as well as other safety-regulation stuff, like carpeting in aircrafts, etc.). Therefore, in order for the final paragraph to actually work, the hat pretty much has to be engulfed in fire constantly. *WAVES ARTISTIC LICENCE MENACINGLY*
> 
> Fun Fact 2: Actually, this is sort of a "anti-fact," but PIRANHAS. Let me tell you a story about piranhas. The story is called _How I am gearing up to do combat against the Guinness Book of Records in the near future_. So I was researching piranhas because Sherlock inexplicably wanted them, and I was trying to find if there were any cases where someone was either murdered or killed by piranhas. No murders, sadly, but only three instances of Death by Piranha (more people are actually murdered/killed by umbrellas. But that's another story...). Two out of three of those instances were plausible and well documented. ...And then, there was the third one. The third instance claimed that in September 1981, a boat in the port of Obidos, Brazil capsized and 300 (or 500) people were eaten in a piranha feeding frenzy. Countless newspapers up to 2008 quote this story. A recent juvenile nonfiction book quoted this story. A _zoo_ quoted this story. I tried to track down the origin of this story because I was calling Bullshit like nobody's business, and I found that although it originated in a sensationalist magazine, its _popularity_ originated in a 1994 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records (and in a few editions after that!). Newer additions have omitted this story, but clearly the damage has been done.
> 
> Now, knowing that this story _must_ have an origin in _something_ , I hunted further. After much time and effort, I discovered from translated Brazilian newspapers that at 3:30 am on September 19, 1981, in the port of Obidos, the _Sobral Santos_ was overloaded and capsized, resulting in 300 deaths by drowning. THEY DID NOT DIE FROM PIRANHA DEVOURMENT. Repeat: THERE ARE ONLY 2 RECORDED HUMAN DEATHS BY PIRANHA. THE PIRANHA ARE INNOCENT. Rather, it was the fact that people were trapped in a sinking, overturned boat that caused their deaths. Which should be an obvious cause of death, you would think.
> 
> I wouldn't make such a fuss about this except since this story is still quoted with alarmingly recent frequency, I feel it's time those 300 people are given the dignity of having their deaths acknowledged properly (imagine if people went around claiming that Titanic fatalities were due to sharks, not freezing or drowning to death?), and my guess is that since Guinness is generally a well-trusted source, that's where most people got the story from. I'm working on sending them a letter about it to ask them if they'll acknowledge the error in some way, cause a 20-year-old lie like that is a bit _much_ , don't you think?
> 
> IN YOUR FACE, MORIARTY. **THROWS DOWN GAUNTLET** Who's next???


End file.
